Chapter V

"So what are you going to do with me?" I demanded.

"Take it easy. Sit where you are." They had shoved me back into my chair at the instrument board. Over in a corner Alan still sat with his hands clasped between his knees, and his fingers working. Just a boy. He could not meet the glance I flung at him.

"Is Dr. Livingston dead?" I said. "If he isn't--Good Lord, are you going to let him just lie there?"

"Oh, he's dead all right," Duroh growled.

"You have no objection if I see, have you?"

"No. Go ahead."

"We'll go out by the lower door," Carruthers said impassively. "Keep your muzzle on him, Pete--I'm going down. Livingston said we'll use a portable spectroscope to locate the Xalite. It's in the base; I'll go rig it up."

"You better not open that base door too quickly," I warned. "If this atmosphere is wrong, in chemical content or pressure--kill us all here like rats in a trap."

"Don't you worry, Taine." From the head of the little incline stairway Carruthers grinned at me with his tight-lipped, ironic smile. "That's why you're alive. We realize you know more about a lot of things in this than we do."

Damnable cold-blooded villain. He waved his hand with jaunty irony at me as he vanished down the staircase. With Duroh's weapons alertly on me, I bent over the crumpled Dr. Livingston. He was dead, beyond question. For years he had been my best, almost my only, friend. There was a lump in my throat as I went back to my seat at the table.

"About this Xalite," Duroh said pleasantly. "In what form do we expect to find it? Pretty pure? Can you tell how pure it is with your instruments? If it's in a pretty pure state, we won't need so much, will we? Fifty pounds or so--to deal out to a panting world for all our lifetime and make us rich enough for any man's dreams."

"So you all three have decided to be murderers?" I retorted. "One of us I should have thought was enough--contaminating damn business--"

My bitter words brought a burst from Alan. "So what can I do?" he flung at me; but still he did not look at me. "You think I want to live here on this God-forsaken little world--and die maybe in a day? Or go back to Earth? Dr. Livingston would have turned me over--you know he would--"

One crime with such ghastly fecundity begets another! Heaven knows I could hardly blame the boy. He was only sixteen; pushed into desperation.

"What will he do?" Duroh grinned. "Why, that's easy, isn't it, Alan? He'll go back to earth--rich. When you're rich--you can bribe officials. Or, at worst, you can't be hunted like a sewer rat as he was before. Money buys hiding places, clothes and food. Easy to hide out, when you've got the decimars."

"And me?" I persisted. "You need my help now? All right--let's say I'll give it. And then what?"

"When we get back to earth we'll turn you loose," he smiled. "Why not? You can hunt us all you like. We'll be gone."

Was that their plan for me? I doubted it a great deal. But I could see no reason now to balk them. Certainly it was to my interest to find the Xalite, get it aboard and start back. With Alan to help me--or possibly even alone, for that matter--I could navigate back to earth. The landing there, on one of the big flying fields, would be far less difficult than here. Meanwhile, I would watch my chance. And get a word alone with Alan if I could. I was still convinced that he wasn't the same stripe as these other two cold-blooded villains.

* * * * *

Duroh was questioning me now, and I answered him freely. A fairly rich deposit of the Xalite should be somewhere near here where we had landed. It would exist, probably as a strata in the metallic rock--not recognizable perhaps with the naked eye, but identifiable with the portable spectroscope.

"And with a pick and shovel we dig it out?" Duroh said. "You damn sure better find it, Taine, if you know what's good for you."

"I will if I can," I agreed.

Carruthers came back. "Come on down and rig up this gadget, Taine. Then we'll get on some heavy clothes and make a start."

Docilely I let them shove me down past our dim living quarters, into the base storeroom. I saw now that Carruthers had a heat-gun clipped to his belt with his knife. Alan apparently was unarmed. Dr. Livingston, I knew, had brought some weapons. They were in his sleeping room--more than these cut-throats had taken--but I had no way of getting to them now.

In the base-room I rigged the small spectroscope, with its lenses, prisms and batteries. Duroh brought us heavy trousers, boots, mackinaws and heavy caps.

"Now," he said, "we're about ready, aren't we? If that air out there is no good, we'll have to go through the midsection air-lock, with air-helmets. That the idea, Taine?"

"That's it," I agreed. "And maybe with pressure suits, for all I know."

But none of that was necessary. Cautiously I admitted the air. It was at once apparent that there was no great difference of pressure. It came slowly hissing in, stopping our ears for a moment. It was cold and dank, heavy to breathe and momentarily oppressive. But the feeling soon passed.

"Very good," Carruthers said. "Open wide, Taine."

I swung the bull's-eye inward ... Zura. As my foot crunched into the moist, wet snow, a pang shot through me. Perhaps I was the first living thing ever to set foot upon an alien world. How different this landing was from what I had anticipated! Dr. Livingston dead; myself a captive in the hands of these cut-throats.

We had cut off the _Planeteer's_ interior gravity, and had found that Zura was little different. As I walked now out into the raw, bleak night, a sense of physical lightness was upon me. I was conscious that if I took a leap it would be prodigious. Gravity perhaps was a quarter less; but the difference certainly was no greater than that.

"We're leaving everything to you," Duroh growled at my elbow. "Make it quick now, Taine, if you know what's good for you. All we want is a supply of the Xalite, and get back and get away in a hurry."

Duroh and I were leading. He kept his little bullet-projector with its muzzle rammed into my side. Behind us came Alan and Carruthers. I carried the small electro-spectroscope, with its batteries slung across my back.

"I have no idea which way to go," I said. "It's all a chance. Suppose we go a little way; then stop and make a test."

"Suit yourself," Carruthers agreed from behind me. "We're cut off, down here in this depression. Once we get up on the level, almost anywhere should do for a start."

It was a weird, fantastic night-scene, as in a moment we emerged up upon the lip of the little depression. Overhead the myriad stars glittered in an inky, frosty sky. Around us spread the wild, tumbled landscape. It was a queerly small area, viewed now from the surface level. The convexity of the little world was instantly apparent, with the horizon everywhere crowding close; the stars in the dark sky which were low at the horizon seemed hanging there, as though one might make a leap and seize them.

* * * * *

We were hardly more than a hundred feet from the ragged little cliff which towered now grimly over us. I flung a glance around. Everywhere great boulders and ice-masses were strewn, wildly tumbled. The starlight glittered prismatic on their tops. The shadows between them were black, yawning pits of emptiness. Everywhere a frigid desolation. But its congealed beauty was marred by the blight of warmth upon it. Veils of ice hung from the ragged, honeycombed little cliff--but they were leprous veils, their beauty eaten away by the blight of warmth, like some hideous disease rotting them. Everywhere water was dripping, running in rivulets, gathering into pools on which the starlight shimmered with a faint opalescent sheen.

"Stop here," Carruthers commanded.

We had picked our tortuous, sloshing way perhaps halfway to the little cliff. "Try the spectroscope here," Carruthers added. "Along the base of that precipice. If there's an outcropping there, it would be easy to get at."

His words struck me with apprehension. Carruthers seemed to know more about this thing than I had hoped. It was my plan now to locate the Xalite if I could. But somehow I feared to let them get their hands on it. With it safely on board the _Planeteer_, it might easily occur to them that they could successfully navigate back to earth. Their purpose in keeping me alive would be ended.... I could not forget with what cold-blooded nonchalance Carruthers had smiled at poor Dr. Livingston and then stabbed the knife into his back. I was alert every second now. If only I could get Duroh interested, with his weapon turned from me just for a moment. With half a chance I would risk a fight now, rather than cold-blooded murder later on.

"Now, let's hope--" Carruthers muttered, as I set up the little hooded spectroscope screen, and trained the instrument on the base of the cliff.

In a breathless moment the band spread out on the screen, glorious little splash of colors, diffusing from one into the next, with the thin dark lines of radiotronic emanations vertical streaks in the band.

Xalite! It was here, unmistakable. I glanced up from the hooded screen. Off there, where starlight was glittering at the ragged base of the little cliff, there was a narrow sword-slash of gray-white rock streaking the rock-face. It was visible now, where ice probably only recently had melted from it. Ore of Xalite! Dr. Livingston had described to me what probably it would look like in its crude state here on Zura. A hundred pounds of that ore would be enough for a lifetime of earth's needs!

"Well," Duroh growled. "What do you see?"

I had been standing silent, peering at the cliff. Had something moved off there? A sort of white shadow, quickly shifting. I had that vague impression. And out of the tail of my eye, vaguely I noticed a huge rock-cluster some ten feet from us. It was piled with fantastic ice-formations, blue-white in the starlight. But it seemed that there were white blobs there which had not been visible a moment ago.

"What's that screen show? Damn you, speak up." Annoyed at my silence, Carruthers prodded me in the ribs with his weapon. "Looks like Xalite--"

"That rock off there," I murmured. "Carruthers, look--"

Whatever vague sort of warning I had intended to give came too late. From beside us in the white, frosty starlight, weird white blobs materialized. Men? Were they? I had a vague glimpse of little white creatures, perhaps the height of my shoulder--white arms, legs, huge round heads, shining bald, slate-gray in the starlight. A horde of them in that second engulfed us.

The spectroscope went clattering as I fell, fighting, with half a dozen of them on top of me. Gruesome little creatures. To my grip their flesh was solid, sleek and cold.... I heard Alan give a startled cry, and then a groan as he went down. Duroh's weapon cracked, with its weird yellow-red stab of flame as the exploding powder in the old-fashioned gun hurled its bullet. The lead slug must have found a mark. There was an eerie, blood-chilling scream--inhuman, like some weird, unnamable animal in its death-cry; and I was aware of one of the little creatures leaping a dozen feet into the air and crashing down.

* * * * *

But Duroh had no chance to fire again. The swarming, snarling little things bore him down. And Carruthers was down. I had tumbled to my back, with half a dozen of them on me. They were heavy; more solid perhaps than an earthman. They seemed to have no weapons; their little fists, small as a child's, were thudding at me like hard balls of ice. Frantically I lunged, but the weight of them held me. A white, furry garment seemed tied around their middle. One of the faces came down above mine; weird face with eyes like slits, holes for nostrils and a wide slit of mouth that jabbered at me with guttural, unintelligible syllables.

"Don't fight," I heard Carruthers shouting. "Better give up--don't goad them to kill us."

It seemed reasonable advice. They were jabbering like monkeys all around us, but now they seemed more eager to make us stop fighting than to harm us. I yielded suddenly, lying limp with their weight pressing me.

"All right," I muttered. "Damn you--get off me."

They understood at least my sudden limpness, and in a moment climbed away, and with a strength fully as great as my own, hauled me to my feet. Carruthers and Duroh now were up, with the little white Zurians gripping them. And I saw Alan, standing pallid and trembling, with blood streaming from a gash in his forehead.

"Got us," Duroh muttered. "Gosh, look at them."

There seemed a hundred or more of the little white forms materializing in the starry whiteness of the Zurian night. The protective coloration of nature. They were hardly visible except when they moved. The group that gripped us were fending off their crowding fellows now as they milled forward, wildly jabbering, peering to see these four strange beings which they had captured.

"Well, they don't seem to want to hurt us," I said. I peered down into the face of the one who was at my side, his small white hands, with long, thin fingers strong as little pincers, gripping my arm. "Take it easy," I said. "Let's be friends."

I tried grinning at him. Perhaps he vaguely understood the grin. The skin on his round white face was hairless, perhaps poreless, sleek as gray-white, polished marble. But it wrinkled with his grimace. I saw that he had no eyelids. The slits of the two sockets suddenly opened wide, so that I could see his huge round white eyeballs, with a very big purple-black lens in their center. It was a grotesque face, but suddenly I realized that it was not unintelligent.

Then we were being shoved forward. For an instant the big Duroh, towering head and shoulders over his little captors, made resistance.

"Don't be an idiot," I shouted at him. "Let them have their way."

The crowd milled around us as we were shoved along the base of the cliff. I could see Alan, pale, silent, with his bloodstained face; the grim, tight-lipped, pallid Carruthers; and Duroh, docile now. And it occurred to me then, as I caught a look of frightened appeal from Duroh, how different things may be, all in a moment or two. I had been captive of Duroh and Carruthers and Alan, just a moment ago. Murderous cut-throats, they would have dispatched me, no doubt, when I had helped them all they needed. But now they looked to me as though we four earthmen were allied here against this fantastic enemy. And it was apparent that, like many bloodthirsty villains, Carruthers and Duroh were terrified. Cowards at heart.

We were being separated in the crowd. "Take it easy," I shouted. "Don't anger or frighten them--they'll kill us all." Certainly I had no wish to have Duroh go into a wild panic, with the Zurians killing me as well as the rest of us. We were all four unarmed now. They had searched us. One or two of them were carrying Duroh's and Carruthers' weapons, carrying them gingerly, awed and puzzled by them.

Where were they taking us? We came to an end of the little ice-cliff, rounded it, and I saw a dark yawning hole, like a cave-entrance in the honeycombed cliffside. The little white Zurians who were leading us plunged into it. I was shoved forward more swiftly now, with the darkness engulfing me--darkness filled with jabbering little voices and the patter of their huge bare feet.

* * * * *

It may have been that at first my eyes were not accustomed to the greater darkness, and that presently, with expanding pupils, I began to see. That, of course. But now I was aware of that sheen of light, inherent to the rocks of this strange little world. A vaguely luminous, opalescent sheen which grew in intensity as we advanced so that it illumined the darkness with a weird, beautiful glitter.

I saw now that we were advancing into a widening tunnel. Already it was some fifty feet wide, with lifting ceiling so that presently I could only dimly see it, far up as it glistened in the opalescent light. Moisture was up there--a myriad tiny drops, glittering like opalescent gems in the eerie glow. Occasionally one would drop and hit my face.

Steadily the jabbering little crowd, with excited guttural voices, pushed forward. I had the feeling at first that we were descending; this winding, broadening tunnel going downward at an ever increasing angle. Then presently it was as though the tunnel were level and as we advanced, the whole little Zurian world seemed turning forward and up over us. All in the viewpoint. Up or down; top or bottom--they are meaningless terms except for comparison.

It was growing steadily colder now. The roof moisture seldom dropped. Ice formations were everywhere here. There was a place where the roof was suddenly much lower, so that I could see an intricate lacery of ice-clusters up there, prismatic with glorious colors. Like stalagmites here on the tunnel floor, the ice stood in great columns, crinkled, glittering with a myriad facets of sparkling sheen. There were other tunnels crossing us now. I tried to imagine how far we had gone. Certainly a mile.

Then I was aware, as we rounded a curve, that ahead of us the shining passage was opening up into some sort of apartment. The light-sheen there was more intense. The crowd of Zurians had fallen silent now; and as another passage crossed us at an angle, our immediate captors herded most of their fellows away. Silently we advanced, with three Zurians gripping each of us. It was as though now we were advancing into some sacred place, so that our captors were suddenly respectfully silent.

"What the devil," Carruthers muttered, as I was shoved close to him.

We came out of the tunnel. I had a quick glimpse of a big blue-white ice-grotto here--walls glittering with an opalescent sheen on hanging veils of ice. And then I gasped; stared, numbed.

The Ice Maiden! The girl Alan and I had seen through the _Planeteer's_ telescope! At the end of the grotto, perhaps a hundred feet from us now, on a small raised dais, she reclined on a pile of white furs. Her head and shoulders were raised on one elbow, her graceful pink-white limbs half revealed by the short white fur garment draped over her loins and breasts. Her hair, blue-white as spun ice, fell in profusion over her shoulders, framing her small oval face that was beautiful with a perfection of earth-beauty!

Our captors were all intoning now: "Tara! Tara! Tara!"

Then as we were hurriedly shoved forward, the girl's arm went up with an imperious gesture; and we were cast loose and flung at her feet!